Is Pearl Jam's Beef With Ticketmaster Officially Squashed?
The Seattle rockers are using Verified Fan for their seven-stadium tour run this summer.
Pearl Jam's public fight with Ticketmaster ended 20 years ago, and if there's any doubt that the two camps have moved past the dispute, Wednesday's announcement that Pearl Jam was using Verified Fan for its upcoming "Home" and "Away" stadium concerts this summer should finally put the matter to rest.
The Seattle rock band is asking fans who want to purchase presale tickets to the band's "Home" shows August 8 and 10 at Safeco Field in Seattle to register through Ticketmaster's Verified Fan platform. Same for the band's "Away" shows at Washington-Grizzly Stadium in Missoula, Montana (Aug. 13), Wrigley Field in Chicago (Aug. 18 and 20.) and Boston's Fenway Park (Sept. 2 and 4).
"I think that Pearl Jam is going out of their way to create a great experience for their fans at the same time that Ticketmaster is also working to improve the fan experience," said Dean Budnick, editor-in-chief for Relix magazine and author of "Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped."
Pearl Jam is using Ticketmaster's Verified Fan platform to keep tickets out of the hands of scalpers and off the large resale sites like StubHub, but the two didn't always see eye-to-eye. In May 1994, after complaining that Ticketmaster had a monopoly on ticketing in the United States, the band hired law firm Sullivan and Cromwell and filed a complaint with the Justice Department, asking for an investigation of Ticketmaster's practices.
A month later, bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard testified before Congress, explaining that they wanted to cap tickets at $18.50 each with a fee no higher than $1.80. Ticketmaster said it needed $2 a ticket to break even and the company's former CEO Fred Rosen said I"f Pearl Jam wants to play for free, we'll be happy to distribute their tickets for free."
Pearl Jam didn't tour the summer of 1994 and tried to skip Ticketmaster venues the following year on it's Vitalogy tour, canceling a number of dates after Eddie Vedder got food poisoning and was hospitalized. In the end the DOJ dropped its investigation of Ticketmaster and the band, unable to convince other artists to participate in the boycott, eventually dropped the fight and played a number of Ticketmaster buildings on its 1998 Yield tour.
While the two sides have enjoyed a low-key truce over the years, Ticketmaster and Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis recently sided on to a plan by Tim Leiweke's Oak View Group to support a new design and management contract for KeyArena (over a rival plan from AEG). The decision to use Verified Fan — a platform used by Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Ed Sheeran — was made to minimize ticket resale for the seven-show tour, which could attract fans from all over the country.
"Our number one goal has always been to get Pearl Jam tickets into the hands of our fans," Curtis said in a statement to Billboard. "We are constantly working up ways to improve our ticketing options and level the playing field. Verified Fan is the best solution out there to beat the bots."
Another Ticketmaster rival, String Cheese Incident manager Mike Luba, said he supports Pearl Jam's efforts to protect its fans using the Ticketmaster platform.
"It's good to see Pearl Jam work with the ticketing industry to take positive steps that make things better for bands, fans and society in general," said Luba, who has battled Ticketmaster over fan club ticket issues in the past.
Luba said artists like Taylor Swift and Reputation tour promoter Louis Messina's efforts to use Verified Fan and price tickets higher — part of the "Slow Ticketing" strategy — was "moving the industry in the right direction." and said he hoped Pearl Jam's use of Verified Fan meant more concerts from the band in the future — "the more Pearl Jam shows, the better for everyone."
David Marcus, EVP and head of Music at Ticketmaster tells Billboard in a statement that "Ticketmaster is honored to partner with an iconic band like Pearl Jam on their summer concert tour. We have an enormous amount of respect for the band and understand how important their relationship is with their fan base."
Registration for the Verified Fan presale ends Feb. 4. Sign up and learn more here.
Comments
"the more Pearl Jam shows, the better for everyone."
"...I changed by not changing at all..."
It is also a little disingenuous on their part. They make money off their own reselling site too. If they were really against scalping then they wouldn't have their own marketplace. Its basically them saying "We are doing this to curb scalpers" (wink wink), but "But if you need to sell be sure to use our marketplace" (wink wink). They aren't going to completely cut off their secondary revenue. They are a corporation.
If TM really wanted to help fix the problem for the good of the industry....
1. Go paperless for all tickets (no transfers, no resale)
2. Match ID and credit card with the tickets
3. Shut down their reselling market
Still doesn't fix the problem. There will always be ways around it, but they can do more.
While they haven't "won" in changing Ticketmaster policy, they instigated an argument and found ways to maintain a fan relationship. The fact that we can still get front row for ~$100 instead of some $250+ VIP package deal amazes me at times.
6/18/03 Chicago-United Center
5/17/06 Chicago-United Center
7/19/13 Chicago-Wrigley Field
10/11/13 Pittsburgh-Consol Energy Center
10/17/14 Moline-IWireless Center (No Code)
10/20/14 Milwaukee-Bradley center (Yield)
4/26/16 Lexington-Rupp Arena
8/20/16 Chicago-Wrigley Field
8/22/16 Chicago-Wrigley Field
8/18/18 Chicago-Wrigley Field
8/20/18 Chicago-Wrigley Field
9/5/23 Chicago-United Center
9/7/23 Chicago-United Center
I have a problem with no transfers/ resales- You're asking me to buy a ticket in February for an August show. Fine, I'll buy it and I plan on going. But sometimes life gets in the way. You're suddenly unemployed, ill or injured. You should be able to transfer tickets, at cost only. Problem is ticketmaster upcharges like crazy to resell. Buyer and seller pay fees. I'd pay $20 to not have to eat a pair of tickets.
I agree that 10C should have a transfer option. Or just do buy backs, and then resell them to other members who entered to access any buy back tix or something. How hard could it be, if it's all electronic?
Fairly certain the cost of their tour t-shirts are not $35, so they have comes to terms with making an obscene profit off their customers.
2003 - Champaign, IL
2006 - Chicago, IL 1 & 2
2007 - Chicago, IL Lollapalooza
2009 - Chicago, IL 1 & 2
2010 - St. Louis, MO
2011 - East Troy, WI 1 & 2 (PJ20 Destination Weekend)
2012 - Atlanta, GA, Missoula, MT
2013 - Chicago, IL (Wrigley Field), Dallas, TX, Oklahoma City, OK
2014 - St. Louis, MO, Tulsa, OK, Moline, IL (No Code, IL), Saint Paul, MN, Milwaukee, WI (Yield, WI)
2016 - Greenville, SC (Vs, SC), Raleigh, NC, Columbia, SC, Boston, MA (Fenway Park 1), Chicago, IL (Wrigley Field 1 & 2)
2022 - Nashville, TN, St. Louis, MO, Oklahoma City, OK, Phoenix, AZ, Las Vegas, NV
2023 - St. Paul, MN 2, Fort Worth, TX 2, Austin, TX 1, and Austin, TX 2
2014 - Soundgarden Tinley Park, IL (with Nine Inch Nails)
2017 - Soundgarden Dallas (cancelled) RIP Chris Cornell
2023 - Jerry Cantrell Milwaukee, WI
They lost, and if you're a musician who plays bigger venues, it's pretty much impossible to avoid using them.
To be fair we lump it all in with TM, but the ticket practices tend to be similar whether it's TM, or another similar ticket agency. High service fees, promoters selling tickets directly to brokers, bots etc... We shit all over TM, but the problems aren't exclusive to TM.
This could be a trainwreck.
The way it's done now with everything in secret and artists getting a huge cut off the resale price (The Industry's dirty little secret....TM being authorized by the artists to hold the best seats so they can be sold directly on StubHub) is terrible for consumers. I don't go to arena shows anymore because of this.
Allstate Arena - Oct 09, 2000
Xcel Energy Center - Jun 16, 2003
United Center - Jun 18, 2003
Fort William Garden - Sep 09, 2005
Xcel Energy Center - Jun 27, 2006
United Center - Aug 23, 2009
Xcel Energy Center - Oct 19, 2014
Xcel Energy Center - August 31, 2023
Xcel Energy Center - September 2, 2023